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In Striking Women: Struggles and Strategies of South Asian Women Workers from Grunwick to Gate Gourmet, Sundari Anitha and Ruth Pearson offer an in-depth examination of two strikes – the Grunwick strike of 1976–78 and the strike at Gate Gourmet in 2005 – to highlight how South Asian migrant women have contributed to the struggle for workers rights in the UK. Praising the book’s incorporation of the wider social and historical context, Amal Shahid finds this an informative and accessible read for those passionate about the history and sociology of labour, gender and migration studies.

After protests in London following the imprisonment of far-right activist Tommy Robinson, William Allchorn examines the changing strategies of the UK’s fringe extreme-right groups in recent months, which include a concerning revival of street protest, mobilising around a narrative of victimisation.

With the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, and with socialist parties around Europe fighting only for national attention, is there hope for an international left? Lea Ypi (LSE) writes that, more than ever, the world has to be made by those sceptical of capitalism. She makes the case for rebuilding international solidarity.

In Developing England’s North: The Political Economy of the Northern Powerhouse, editors Craig Berry and Arianna Giovannini bring together contributors to explore different facets of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ as announced in a Manchester speech by then UK Chancellor, George Osborne. This is a valuable collection that shows the incoherence and ineffectiveness of the NP, and the urgent need to develop […]

Democratic politics in the UK is currently rife with conflict because this multi-national state encourages it, writes Helen Thompson (University of Cambridge). Maintaining political stability has historically required prudence and pragmatic restraint. Minority governments and more frequent elections have occurred when the UK’s economic and political relationships with the rest of the world are disputed, and […]

Does the European Parliament adequately represent the views of European citizens? Drawing on a recent study, Miriam Sorace (LSE) illustrates that while the Parliament is often criticised for being too distant from its voters, it is far more representative of the views of voters than commonly thought. Nevertheless, a lack of information about European election campaigns, as […]

With the rise of far-right parties in Europe during the 2000s, some centre-right parties spotted an opportunity to win back votes by pivoting towards immigration. James F Downes (Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Matthew Loveless (European University Institute) find that they were more successful if they were out of government at the time. Incumbent centre-right parties, […]

Most elections are now monitored by international election observers, whose presence is intended to deter vote-rigging and who report on whether the vote was ‘free and fair’. But after the Kenyan Constitutional Court nullified the recent elections there despite observers having approved them, the value of these missions has been questioned. Sophie Donszelmann (LSE), Cristoforo […]

The British public has voted on membership of the EU on two occasions. In 1975, based on a turnout of 64 per cent, two-thirds voted to stay in the EEC, cementing Britain’s place for the next four decades. In 2016, on a turnout of 72 per cent, 52 per cent of the public voted to […]

Populism is not just a symptom of older people’s nostalgia for traditional values, writes Henrik P Bang. It is a rejection of a global neoliberal creed that pits individuals against each other. The hard-won social capital and notions of fairness that older generations prize have been replaced by a race for success in which human relationships exist […]